


Broken Dreams I Never Had

by Lumelle



Series: Broken Dreams [1]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Infertility, M/M, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Past Relationship(s), Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 13:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumelle/pseuds/Lumelle
Summary: When Julie faces a crisis in his relationship with Adelheid, it takes a meeting with someone even worse off to pull him out of his despair. Not that Hibari would ever admit to being unhappy.





	Broken Dreams I Never Had

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2011 on my LiveJournal account, posted here with minor language edits.

It was a nice night, he supposed. The air was cool and calm, with a few lazy clouds drifting across the face of the almost full moon in a slow parade of silence. A beautiful night, one might have said, except he was not in the proper state of mind to enjoy such things right now.

Julie wasn't drunk, not as much as he would have wished to be. He'd drunk just enough to give him a nice buzz for a while and enough of a smell that Adelheid would let him have it when he returned, but nowhere near enough to forget why he was drinking in the first place. Nowhere near enough to stop hurting.

He almost stumbled over his own feet, biting back a curse. Perhaps he'd better stay out another while before heading home. Knowing Adelheid, he would get less grief for arriving late than for arriving drunk.

Assuming Adelheid hadn't just cried herself to sleep while he was gone. Or perhaps she was crying just now, tears soaking into her pillow, with nobody to hold her and comfort her and tell her it would be all right, somehow it would all turn out all right even though right now he could not imagine how that could be true.

He was a filthy, despicable coward of a man.

Deep as he was in his thoughts, as deep as his half-drunken state would allow him to be, anyway, he did not even realise the street he was heading down was familiar. His steps had not been planned, a mere substitute for taking any meaningful action as he tried to escape something he could not flee from, yet somehow his feet seemed to have led him to a particular destination. Not that it would matter at this time of the night. Not unless he made enough noise that he would never return to Adelheid again on account of getting killed.

There was a man standing by the gate to a traditional Japanese house. Julie did not notice him until he fell over his own feet at last, falling hard on the ground only to find himself staring at someone else's feet mere inches from his face.

"How strange." Hibari's tone was airy as he looked down at Julie, a small smirk curling the thin lips as he picked the cigarette from his mouth, a faint trail of smoke disappearing into the darkness of the night. "Do you often make a habit of drinking yourself into a stupor, Katou Julie?"

"How strange," Julie spat in return, the haze of alcohol and the distant pain it had dulled for the moment silencing the faintest shreds of common sense he had once possessed. Otherwise, he would have known better than to talk back at Hibari Kyouya of all people. "Does your boy toy know you smoke?"

Hibari's expression did not waver one bit. "My smoking or not doing so is no business of Cavallone's." He took another drag of his cigarette, exhaling the smoke before adding, "Even more so when I picked the habit up from him.”

"And my drinking does not concern you one bit." Somehow he managed to push himself up again, brushing dirt off his hands and knees. "Not as long as I don't start a fight and break the peace of Namimori."

"My, my. To think you would learn." Hibari shifted, still leaning against the edge of the gate to his house. "And your wife?"

"What of her?"

"Does your drinking concern her?" There was a sharp edge to Hibari's tone that Julie was not quite drunk enough to miss.

"Adelheid." He murmured the name more to himself than in any kind of response to Hibari, though he knew well enough the other heard everything. "Right now I'd better stay away from her." Better not cause her any further disappointment.

"How typical of a herbivore." Hibari snorted. "Problems won't disappear just because you keep avoiding them, Katou Julie." Because he was one to speak, clearly. Julie was not the one who had disappeared for three months after the first confession from his lover.

"Well, this problem won't disappear regardless of what I do." He swallowed. "Not when I'm the problem." Not when he was the reason Adelheid was crying.

"Are you, now?" Another shift, a mere rearranging of the shadows before him, and all of a sudden Hibari was standing close enough for a tendril of smoke to caress Julie's cheek. "And what form of a problem are you, pray tell? If another illusionist has taken charge of you, allow me to kill you here and now." There was a small smirk to his lips, yet they both knew all too well he was not joking.

"No. No, it's..." Julie trailed off, shaking his head. "Why am I even talking to you? It's not like you care."

"You are walking down the street well past midnight, Katou Julie. Whether I care or not is irrelevant when you are unlikely to find anyone else willing to listen to your woes." Hibari stepped away, turning his back to Julie. It seemed like the conversation was over, yet Julie knew better. He had not dealt with Adelheid for a lifetime just to let himself be confused by another mysterious fighter.

Hibari had said nobody else would be willing to listen. The hidden implication being that Hibari himself might.

"We had an appointment today." He was trailing after Hibari, now, eyes only just making out the lithe silhouette in the darkened garden as Julie did his best to match the pace of Hibari's leisurely steps, the scent of cigarette smoke invading his nose. "Not the first one, either. We've been at this for years." Many long, painful years.

Hibari did not say anything, did not ask for clarification. However, the mere fact he was yet to chase Julie away spoke volumes.

"We've been trying for a child," Julie murmured. "For years now, we've been trying and hoping and praying. It's gotten to the point where anything involving the matter just makes me want to scream because it's never good news. It's never good." Least of all today.

"Bad news." Hibari's tone did not betray any emotion. "That's why you're drunk."

"The worst." Julie swallowed. "We can't have a child. Not ever, it looks like. Well, Adelheid wouldn't have a problem, not as such. It's me. It's all me. Chances of my ever fathering a healthy child are negligible."

Only silence greeted his words.

"It's not fair." His hands clenched, nails digging into his palms. It still wasn't enough. He could not hurt enough. "Adelheid never wanted anything as much as a family. One of her own, with kids she can raise and see them grow up. The first generation of Shimon that won't have to cry and suffer. And now she can't have it, just because I'm not enough of a man to give her that."

"Life is not fair." As though that was any news.

"It never was for us. I figured we were well overdue for a bit of happiness." Ha. As though the world would allow them even a moment's reprieve. "It's supposed to be easy, isn't it? Just stick it in, have some fun, and wait for nine months. It's not all that complicated. Even teenage boys do it all the time and they're not even trying. Why can't I do it when it's the one thing my wife wants above all else?"

"Because we do not get to choose." Hibari came to a halt, abrupt enough Julie almost walked into him. "Because life will always find our weakest spots and strike there when we least expect it."

Julie blinked. Even his drunken mind managed to figure out that this was not something Hibari would say under normal circumstances. "Hibari," he swallowed, hesitating for a moment, "what happened?"

Hibari was quiet long enough that Julie almost thought he would not answer at all. Then, all of a sudden, he spoke. "Cavallone will be married next summer."

Cavallone. Getting married. And Hibari did not look happy. "I suppose I should not congratulate."

"No." A bit of silence as he sucked in another draft of smoke. "A young mafia princess. Impeccable pedigree, pretty face, eyes dark and deep enough you can see the back of her skull. His consigliere are most pleased, or so I have been told."

Wrong. That was wrong. All of this was wrong. "And you?" Julie looked at Hibari, at the unmoving shadow right in front of him, close enough he could have reached a hand to touch him yet appearing to be far, far away. "He loves you."

"Yes. Yes, he does." Hibari started walking again, even slower this time. "He's told me as much, several times. He still told me that when he informed me that he has to marry for the sake of the family name. Loves me too much to make me his shameful secret, or so he tells me. So he chose to cut me free instead."

Now, Julie felt sick to his stomach. "Cavallone wouldn't do that." Surely not. Not the Cavallone he knew.

"He already did, though." A chuckle escaped Hibari's dark form, faint and broken and perhaps bitter. "It's his loss." Yet it was Hibari who was walking about in the wee hours of the morning.

"Why?" Was the wind starting to pick up, or why did he feel so cold? "Why would he do that? Your relationship was a public secret. How could that be such a threat to his reputation?" It was amazing just what people would overlook when the person involved was powerful enough.

"It wasn't our relationship that was the main problem. It was the lack of children that was the necessary outcome of our affair." Hibari gave Julie a glance over his shoulder. "I never even dreamed of a child of my own with the one I care about, Katou Julie. I never had the chance to be that foolish."

Right. Hibari had never been able to even entertain the possibility. And yet, the hint of guilt that ate at Julie’s heart did nothing to relieve the pain of his own agony. "It's not fair," he murmured. "None of this is."

"Life is not fair, Katou Julie." Hibari shook his head, a slow motion that let the wind tumble his hair about. "It never was, nor will it ever be. We don't get to choose the cards we are dealt. All we can do is take that hand and play it as well as we can."

"What is there to do when you are dealt an empty hand, though?" That certainly was how he felt right now. His hands were empty, powerless to help the woman he loved, powerless to save their shared dream from destruction. Empty like the look in Hibari's eyes as he raised his head to follow the trail of smoke fading into the slight breeze.

"It is never empty, though. Not really." And since when had Hibari started to speak in riddles? "You're just blind to it. You've been so focused on that one card, that one sliver of hope, that you have become blind to the other paths you could take. Perhaps they are not quite the same, perhaps they are not what you dreamed, but that does not make them any less real."

"Except there is just one destination I want."

"Bullshit." Well, at least he didn't mangle any words, there. "You want a family. There are many paths to that, paths other than a biological child from both of you. Your sperm and your wife's ova are not the lone solution to what was never a problem; they are a luxury some people cannot ever dream about."

Hibari was right, of course. Even Julie knew as much. However, it was quite hard to even contemplate other possibilities when Adelheid's face was stained with tears and he felt as though his entire manhood had just been revoked. "And what cards are there in your hand, then?" Oh, great. So he was a suicidal drunk, now.

Hibari's eyes turned to him again, dark and veiled, and if Julie hadn't known better he might have almost thought there was a fleeting hint of tears there as well. "Cards I never had before, Katou Julie. Cards I never cared to have." He turned away, now, a pale hand dropping the fading stub of the cigarette for his foot to smother on the ground. "Go to your wife. She is waiting."

"She must be asleep by now." Or so he sure hoped. The only reason she would be awake at this time would be because she was still crying.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, she is waiting for you."

Julie did not argue.

Adelheid was in bed as he arrived, asleep for all appearances yet she stirred as Julie got in the bed. He drew her close, then, apologized for the lingering smell of alcohol, the hint of smoke the wind had not carried away. Adelheid didn't say anything, didn't ask anything, and somehow that struck him deeper than any accusations or even open disappointment could ever have.

In the morning, Julie decided, they would talk. They would talk about their situation and the cards they had been dealt and how to best play those cards to their advantage. Surely together they could put together a strategy that would not be quite so painful. Together.

His mind wandered back to the lone shadow in the gardens, the faint halo of cigarette smoke surrounding the dark silhouette before the grey tendrils were carried away by the wind, fading away into nothingness as the last embers were smothered, ground out like the lingering flames of a love lost.

His cards were not that bad. They were not ideal, but they were not bad, and if he played them right he might make Adelheid smile again one day. Might make their dream a bit more real.

Some never got the chance to dream in the first place.

Julie still smelled smoke as he drifted off to sleep, Adelheid held close.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this was a one-off. However, looking back at it now, I feel compelled to write a happier sequel to make up for all this darkness.


End file.
